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Mitochondrial Pseudogenes Suggest Repeated Inter-Species Hybridization among Direct Human Ancestors

The hypothesis that the evolution of humans involves hybridization between diverged species has been actively debated in recent years. We present the following novel evidence in support of this hypothesis: the analysis of nuclear pseudogenes of mtDNA (“NUMTs”). NUMTs are considered “mtDNA fossils” a...

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Autores principales: Popadin, Konstantin, Gunbin, Konstantin, Peshkin, Leonid, Annis, Sofia, Fleischmann, Zoe, Franco, Melissa, Kraytsberg, Yevgenya, Markuzon, Natalya, Ackermann, Rebecca R., Khrapko, Konstantin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9140377/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35627195
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes13050810
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author Popadin, Konstantin
Gunbin, Konstantin
Peshkin, Leonid
Annis, Sofia
Fleischmann, Zoe
Franco, Melissa
Kraytsberg, Yevgenya
Markuzon, Natalya
Ackermann, Rebecca R.
Khrapko, Konstantin
author_facet Popadin, Konstantin
Gunbin, Konstantin
Peshkin, Leonid
Annis, Sofia
Fleischmann, Zoe
Franco, Melissa
Kraytsberg, Yevgenya
Markuzon, Natalya
Ackermann, Rebecca R.
Khrapko, Konstantin
author_sort Popadin, Konstantin
collection PubMed
description The hypothesis that the evolution of humans involves hybridization between diverged species has been actively debated in recent years. We present the following novel evidence in support of this hypothesis: the analysis of nuclear pseudogenes of mtDNA (“NUMTs”). NUMTs are considered “mtDNA fossils” as they preserve sequences of ancient mtDNA and thus carry unique information about ancestral populations. Our comparison of a NUMT sequence shared by humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas with their mtDNAs implies that, around the time of divergence between humans and chimpanzees, our evolutionary history involved the interbreeding of individuals whose mtDNA had diverged as much as ~4.5 Myr prior. This large divergence suggests a distant interspecies hybridization. Additionally, analysis of two other NUMTs suggests that such events occur repeatedly. Our findings suggest a complex pattern of speciation in primate/human ancestors and provide one potential explanation for the mosaic nature of fossil morphology found at the emergence of the hominin lineage. A preliminary version of this manuscript was uploaded to the preprint server BioRxiv in 2017 (10.1101/134502).
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spelling pubmed-91403772022-05-28 Mitochondrial Pseudogenes Suggest Repeated Inter-Species Hybridization among Direct Human Ancestors Popadin, Konstantin Gunbin, Konstantin Peshkin, Leonid Annis, Sofia Fleischmann, Zoe Franco, Melissa Kraytsberg, Yevgenya Markuzon, Natalya Ackermann, Rebecca R. Khrapko, Konstantin Genes (Basel) Article The hypothesis that the evolution of humans involves hybridization between diverged species has been actively debated in recent years. We present the following novel evidence in support of this hypothesis: the analysis of nuclear pseudogenes of mtDNA (“NUMTs”). NUMTs are considered “mtDNA fossils” as they preserve sequences of ancient mtDNA and thus carry unique information about ancestral populations. Our comparison of a NUMT sequence shared by humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas with their mtDNAs implies that, around the time of divergence between humans and chimpanzees, our evolutionary history involved the interbreeding of individuals whose mtDNA had diverged as much as ~4.5 Myr prior. This large divergence suggests a distant interspecies hybridization. Additionally, analysis of two other NUMTs suggests that such events occur repeatedly. Our findings suggest a complex pattern of speciation in primate/human ancestors and provide one potential explanation for the mosaic nature of fossil morphology found at the emergence of the hominin lineage. A preliminary version of this manuscript was uploaded to the preprint server BioRxiv in 2017 (10.1101/134502). MDPI 2022-05-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9140377/ /pubmed/35627195 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes13050810 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Popadin, Konstantin
Gunbin, Konstantin
Peshkin, Leonid
Annis, Sofia
Fleischmann, Zoe
Franco, Melissa
Kraytsberg, Yevgenya
Markuzon, Natalya
Ackermann, Rebecca R.
Khrapko, Konstantin
Mitochondrial Pseudogenes Suggest Repeated Inter-Species Hybridization among Direct Human Ancestors
title Mitochondrial Pseudogenes Suggest Repeated Inter-Species Hybridization among Direct Human Ancestors
title_full Mitochondrial Pseudogenes Suggest Repeated Inter-Species Hybridization among Direct Human Ancestors
title_fullStr Mitochondrial Pseudogenes Suggest Repeated Inter-Species Hybridization among Direct Human Ancestors
title_full_unstemmed Mitochondrial Pseudogenes Suggest Repeated Inter-Species Hybridization among Direct Human Ancestors
title_short Mitochondrial Pseudogenes Suggest Repeated Inter-Species Hybridization among Direct Human Ancestors
title_sort mitochondrial pseudogenes suggest repeated inter-species hybridization among direct human ancestors
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9140377/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35627195
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes13050810
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